"Independent" refers to candidates who are on the ballot but are unaffiliated with any political party. "Others" refers to candidates from any number of third parties who are on the ballot.

Iowa6 Electoral votes

Iowa is a heavily contested presidential battleground in 2012. Al Gore won Iowa by just 0.3 percent in 2000, while George W. Bush won in 2004 by 0.7 percent. Bush was the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Iowa in 20 years. Barack Obama won with a more comfortable 54 percent in 2008. In 2010, Republicans won the governorship and control of the general assembly. White evangelical/born-again voters comprised 31 percent of Iowa's 2008 electorate. McCain won roughly 2/3rds of these votes, while Obama won roughly 2/3rds of the non-white evangelical vote.

To illustrate how exit poll results should be read, let's use hypothetical results as an illustration.

The data is available in two formats: A graphic visualization and as a table.

In the examples to the left, the first column of numbers shows how many people who voted today fell into each category.

In our example, that means 18 percent of all voters were between the ages of 18-29.

Of those voters, 62 percent voted for the Democratic Party candidate (colored in blue), 33 percent voted for the Republican Party candidate (colored in red) and another 5 percent voted for a candidate that did not belong to either party.

Also you may notice some categories such as "Vote by Income" and "Vote by Age" appear more than once. In those cases, the data has been rolled up differently. While the data may vary among the tables, all of the tables are correct.

For instance, "Vote by Income" might show up three times, with different breakdowns: less or more than $50,000; less or more than $100,000; and less than $50,000, $50,000-$100,000 and more than $100,000.

How to read exit polls

To illustrate how exit poll results should be read, let's use hypothetical results as an illustration.

Vote by Age

18-29:18%

62%

33%

30-44:28%

52%

42%

45-64:39%

40%

52%

65+:15%

41%

51%

Vote by Age

total

Obama

Romney

Other / NA

18-29:21%

53%

46%

1%

30-44:29%

39%

57%

4%

45-64:37%

29%

68%

3%

65+:14%

23%

72%

5%

The data is available in two formats: A graphic visualization and as a table.

In the examples to the left, the first column of numbers shows how many people who voted today fell into each category.

In our example, that means 18 percent of all voters were between the ages of 18-29.

Of those voters, 62 percent voted for the Democratic Party candidate (colored in blue), 33 percent voted for the Republican Party candidate (colored in red) and another 5 percent voted for a candidate that did not belong to either party.

Also you may notice some categories such as "Vote by Income" and "Vote by Age" appear more than once. In those cases, the data has been rolled up differently. While the data may vary among the tables, all of the tables are correct.

For instance, "Vote by Income" might show up three times, with different breakdowns: less or more than $50,000; less or more than $100,000; and less than $50,000, $50,000-$100,000 and more than $100,000.